Benchmarks show Apple's chip is generally the more fit competitor, however the Tegra 3 still manages to impress

Apple, Inc.'s (AAPL) new iPad 3 processor, the A5X, has been pitted against a top-of-the-line Android chip from NVIDIA Corp. (NVDA), the Tegra 3 in the real world. The Tegra 3 is found in the Transformer Prime, the flagship Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) tablet from ASUSTEK Computer, Inc. (TPE:2357).

Early reviews and analysis commentaries from various parties were rather light on hard performance numbers for the CPU. But the folks over at Laptop Magazine have dropped a full set of CPU and GPU benchmarks on the iPad 3 and evaluated how it performed versus the Tegra 3.

In GLBenchmark 2.1, the A5X is a beast. Apple's tablet system-on-a-chip (SoC) is thought to pack a PowerVR SGX543MP4+ (the same chip found in the Sony Corp.'s (TYO:6758) PlayStation Vita). Apple wasn't kidding when it said the chip was four times as fast as the Tegra 3. In a huge win for Imagination Technologies plc. (LON:IMG), the GPU is actually close to 5 times as fast as Tegra 3's GeForce derived mobile GPU.

[Image Source: Laptop Magazine]

Ironically, while graphics veteran NVIDIA languishes in graphics, it hits back equally hard in the CPU department. The Tegra 3 outperformed the A5X more than 2-fold in the GeekBench benchmark, which examines various CPU performance metrics. The only victory for Apple came in the stream test.

[Image Source: Laptop Magazine]

Overall, these results are not surprising. Both the A5X and Tegra 3 use the licensed Cortex-A9 design from ARM Holdings Plc. (LON:ARM). And the A5X has two cores, while the Tegra 3 is a quad-core design. Now, the comparison isn't exactly apples and apples, as the Tegra 3 in the Transformer Prime is clocked at 1.3 GHz, where as the iPad's chip is clocked at 1 GHz. Thus the A5X may be actually a bit more efficient on a per-core basis, albeit weaker overall in raw power.

Unfortunately for NVIDIA, those results don't necessarily translate into real-world performance. The stock ICS browser ran the Sunspider Javascript test suite slower than the stock iPad 3 Safari variant. Ultimately, this reminds us of Windows Phone, which runs silky-smooth on a single core. The lesson here is that software is equally important to the raw computing power. ICS appears to be either less efficient or insufficiently threaded. Count that as another win for the A5X.

A handful of games such as Shadowgun and RipTide are using the Tegra 3's extra computing muscle to pull off slick effects like physics and reflections. While the iPad 3 lacks these niceties, it does offer much crisper rendering, thanks to its higher resolution 2048x1536 pixel screen. That's a lot of pixels, hence the need for that beefy GPU.

In terms of gaming the iPad 3 and Transformer Prime seem to be neck and neck -- the iPad 3 offers gaudier resolutions, but the Transformer Prime offers unique visual effects in certain apps.

ASUSTEK is also hoping to level the playing field a bit with its coming Transformer Prime "Infinity" (TF701), which sports a 1920x1200 pixel resolution, up from the current model's 1280x800. The real question is what GPU will be inside that. After all, the Tegra 3 doesn't seem like it has the muscle to power that high a resolution display. One has to wonder whether ASUSTEK won't jump ship to a new PowerVR equipped SoC to quench its mobile graphics thirst.

That GL Bench is stunning. That is an outrageous difference in performance.

The CPU benchmark, likewise, is equally as stunning. The difference in clock speed can account for some of that difference (maybe 200 points?) but not nearly enough. It's ironic to me that Nvidia is mopping the floor in CPU performance but getting absolutely embarrassed in the GPU department.

At the end of the day though software makes the hardware irrelevant. iOS and WP7 just operate smoother than Android does. Android is a warm knife through butter, iOS/WP7 is a hot knife.

Not necessarily ironic, iPad's huge battery and heat issues may come to show why the higher benchmark # isn't as important as power conservation.

It would be nice if we could "have it all", and on the cheap, but there will always be the battery tradeoff until we develop a battery with multiple times more energy density (and even then, companies will just think about downsizing the product with a smaller cheaper battery pack).

The "new iPad" is about as heavy as the original and just slightly thicker than the 2. 10 hours of battery life is good enough for me. I haven't heard anything of heat issues (yet) but I haven't held one in my hands and probably won't until someone shows me one.

It's a fill test. Probably has more to do with graphics memory bus speed than the actual GPU. As with all benchmarks, it's important that all these components tests be considered as part of a whole, not piecemeal. The whole is what's important to the end-user.

The component benchmarks are more useful for helping the hardware designers decide which parts to improve in the next gen product. It's misleading and I would say irresponsible for marketing to use them to sell to end-users.

It'd be like Toyota advertising "The Prius uses no gas!*"

Strictly true, but incredibly deceptive the way it's presented.

* When stopped and idle for more than 10 seconds.

quote: At the end of the day though software makes the hardware irrelevant. iOS and WP7 just operate smoother than Android does. Android is a warm knife through butter, iOS/WP7 is a hot knife.

I think this is Android's Linux roots showing through. The Linux (and Unix) community has never really cared much for user interfaces. That's why CLIs (character line interfaces) are still very strong in that community. That's why they scoffed at the Mac and Windows when they first came out. Even X-windows is just a regular program.

iOS prioritizes user interface interactions and animations. That's what keeps it silky smooth. But the tradeoff is that if there's something CPU-intensive going on in the background, the UI can starve it (e.g. your music playback can skip). Android does not prioritize the UI, hence its multitasking is better, but the interface doesn't appear as smooth to the end-user.

I'm with Apple on this. In old days with single-core processors, equality of priority made sense. But now that dual cores are standard and quad cores are showing up, there's no reason not to prioritize the UI to keep it smooth and responsive. At a very minimum, the UI should be able to do as much as it likes whenever it likes on one core. Let the other apps and processes fight over the remaining core(s), as well as use unused cycles on the UI's core. But give the UI absolute priority over one core.

Unix and Linux have no GUI real because of tits application. A computer with no display does not need a fancy user interface. Hand held devices and tables which are nothing but display need great user interfaces. I think you are forgetting that you have to think about your devices application. Cores and flops are cool but only matter if the software can utilize it. iPhone has a slower CPU then rest of its competitors yet the software running on it does just fine. As far as roots are concerned, the *nix operating systems are very modular and cheap to obtain and license.

Stop thinking about the hardware too much and focus on the total experience, Currently Apple has things figured out well from purchase show room experience, buying, opening packaging, first boot, ergonomics, all the useability stuff, customer support, ponies etc. Others do well is most respects. What apple does better than no one else is ship few products with great components. Notice I did not say best.

We on this site need to stop harping on pissing wars and try to device at a given price point, what is the best deal. Maybe Anand or the anandtech employees can use tables like for the GPU stuff and try to do comparisons on price brackets. with many tablets being around $400 maybe there is not much of a table but for smart phones, laptops, netbooks, ultrabooks, desktops and workstations maybe we can.

I'm sorry but a GL fill test is not comparable to Toyota saying 'the Prius uses no gas!'. It's a legitimate measure of the power and speed of a GPU when in use and needs no such disclaimers such as 'when the GPU is not being used'. It's not misleading any more than any of the CPU benchmarks are - which as the article states weren't all won by the Tegra.

I agree with you in general that how a device is put together overall is the most relevant metric but there are no easy benchmarks for that, taking FPS, for example, is not a proper benchmark because it doesn't take into account the resolution of that FPS. There's no benchmark to demonstrate that even with a slower CPU the iPad 'feels' faster when in use, either. To try and stay objective, review sites benchmark each individual component, and then offer their analysis on what the overall effect feels like.

It's becoming very difficult to pick the best performance part now. Since tablets and smartphones are quite limited without a dedicated internet access, I believe that is the most important metric to judge a mobile device now.

The mobile sector is refreshing parts so fast, the latest phone or tablet will usually be the fastest, only to have something faster come out in as little as a few months.

The Cortex A15 parts combined with the power VX 6 series are going to be insane. (The cpu AND gpu should be around 4x faster than the fastest we have now.) At those levels we're going to be getting mobile video game consoles soon.

But then it all just eventually comes back to your internet connection, which is getting worse and worse for more and more money.

Except... What the artical is saying is that the latest release doesn't actually out pwrform the competition in all usage scenarios.So knowing the performance of the latest gadget is still important as it's not always going to be clear cut.

True, but going really into depth with benchmarks gets complicated. Some architectures do well on some, well on others, and then real world performance is completely different based on what software you're using. So many variables.

You'll almost always have a case where X GPU beats Y GPU in Z benchmark and vice versa. Rarely do you see one architecture smash everything. (Unless you're Sandybridge vs. Bulldozer, jajajaja)

Ok the extra speed is nice but what the tablet market needs are devices that last two or more days on a single charge. Another good feature is a device that can be dropped at any angle multiple times without issue. The former is doable now while the latter requires some help from other industries.

I'd like to see a manufacturer build a device focused on battery life. Optimize the software, cpu, gpu, backlight, screen and any other hardware to sip as little power as possible, even at the expense of performance, and then beef up the battery a little if necessary. I think the tech is there for longer life devices...

Panasonic should make a toughpad! I would love to have all of my technical orders, access to forums, tech sites, and parts supplier pages immediately available to me while working in the field. A tablet thats resistant to chemicals/insdustrial solvents, etc.

I wonder if I vacuum seal my tablet w/ a food sealer, if it will still accept input? That would be good enough in the mean time.

The only thing that the new Tegra 3 tablets and the new iToy can do that older tablets struggle with is GAMES. Honestly, as long as I can read my news, surf the web (including Flash enabled sites!), read my email, read my ebooks, and use Netflix and Hulu, I am good to go! Everyone seems to be falling all over themselves to get the latest and greatest CPUs and GPUs should just keep their "old" tablet and get a game console!

Well isn't it nice for you that the "iToy" company is still selling the older tablet (iPad2) and at a reduced price?So what exactly is your complaint? You would prefer that Apple kept selling iPad2 at the old price and not introduce iPad3?

quote: The stock ICS browser ran the Sunspider Javascript test suite slower than the stock iPad 3 Safari variant. Ultimately, this reminds us of Windows Phone, which runs silky-smooth on a single core.

Sunspider has nothing to do with "silky-smooth"; that's just the GPU accelerating the GUI. My HTC Sensation on ICS and Chrome can beat the iphone4s on sunspider (it still does even with the stock ICS brower).

The extension of The Way It's Meant to be Played Program to Tegra is an advantage since nVidia can support developers to optimizing games for Tegra and enable additional graphical effects. Do the effects co-developed have to be nVidia exclusive? I believe there were extra Tegra 2 effects developed for Galaxy on Fire 2 that have since made their way back to the iOS version. Clearly that hasn't happened with Shadowgun and RipTide. Are there any details on how the program actually works? Might be a good investigative piece.

Glad to see the Tegra 3 does pull ahead in raw CPU, but as we've seen, raw CPU only matters so much. I'm worried that the Transformer Pad Infinity and Iconia Tab A700 may choke because they're being asked to do what the iPad does, but with much less headroom.

And remember, NVIDIA's supposed to be the Android powerhouse... this could set the agenda for 2012 in Android tablets. If it does, Apple gets to do a victory lap.

You left out- Apple steals from everyone- Apple is the most polluting and labor exploiting company on earth- Apple wants to destroy all innovation, with its patent lawsuits and its stranglehold on the App Store.

- Steals what, exactly? If they legally stole something, they can be legally sued. If they didn't, they didn't steal. Learn that you can't steal things which aren't patented.- Apple has been shown by impartial inspections to be one of the least exploitative companies when it comes to labour in China.- Apple has every right to protect its patents through the legal system. If those patents should not be patents, they wont succeed. As it should be. Apple has also been sued by every company they have sued at various points in the recent past, so they haven't even 'started it' in many cases.